Derek M. Bolen

When Instructors Misbehave: An Examination of Student-to-Student Connectedness as a Mediator in the College Classroom

Using systems theory as a lens, instructor misbehaviors were examined in the context of the college classroom to determine if student-to-student connectedness mediated the relationships between instructor misbehaviors and student involvement and affective learning. Student-to-student connectedness mediated the relationships between instructor apathy and students’ willingness to talk in class and self-regulated learning. For example, when instructors are perceived as apathetic, students can still create a supportive, connected communication environment that facilitates positive learning outcomes. Connectedness partially mediated the relationships between irresponsibility and derisiveness, and students’ willingness to talk in class and self-regulated learning. However, connectedness did not mediate the relationships between instructor misbehaviors and affective learning. When instructor misbehaviors occur in the classroom, students may still experience positive learning outcomes through a connected classroom climate; however, in the end, students are likely to negatively evaluate the instructor and course.

Instructor Compliance to Student Requests: An Examination of Student-to-Student Connectedness as Power in the Classroom

Using facework as a theoretical lens, we examined power in the classroom from the standpoint that students, as a connected group, may have upward influence in the college classroom. Participants included both students (N = 375) and faculty (N = 104) who reported on perceptions of classroom connectedness and instructor compliance to student requests. Both students and instructors reported a positive link between perceptions of student-to-student connectedness and instructor compliance. In addition, instructors were more likely to comply when they reported liking their students. Finally, students perceived greater connectedness and compliance in smaller classes than in larger classes. However, instructors did not share this perception. Overall, this study revealed that a connected classroom climate may serve as a relational resource for students that can impact an instructors decisions in the college classroom.

After Dinners, in the Garage, Out of Doors, and Climbing on Rocks

My brother Zack and I had recently been displaced from life—out of school, out of work, out of romantic relationships. Seeking respite, we began staying with our mom and dad in our childhood home. It didn’t take much longer than a week of lazing around listening to sullen music and looping what we identified as keychildhood movies before our parents saw fit to tax the sanctuary we were taking with manual labor.

Self, Relationship, Positionality, and Politics: A Community Autoethnographic Inquiry Into Collaborative Writing

In 2009, Toyosaki, Pensoneau-Conway, Wendt, and Leathers developed a collaborative writing method called community autoethnography (CAE). Participants dialogically collaborate through writing in order to “resituate identified social/cultural and sensitive issues” with the explicit goals of community-building and “cultural and social intervention.” In this article, we use CAE to explore and interrogate the politics, ethics, and boundaries of our collaborations and relationships. As individuals entering this collaborative engagement, we occupy various positions in relation to each other—stranger, best friend, student-turned-colleague/friend, student-friend, sibling, and so on. Each of these positions is subsequently complicated by social positions and relational politics that necessarily inform the process of collaborative writing. We write vulnerabilities across boundaries and between relationships, and in the process, with careful purpose, we write the becoming of new relationships, the becoming of community.

Instructor Credibility as a Mediator of Instructors’ Compulsive Communication and Student Communication Satisfaction in the College Classroom

The purpose of this investigation was twofold: (a) from a dialogic pedagogy perspective, to determine the possible negative association between instructors’ compulsive communication and student communication satisfaction; and (b) using Expectancy Violations Theory as a framework, to test the extent to which instructor credibility mediated the negative association between compulsive communication and student communication satisfaction. We found that students’ perceptions of instructors’ compulsive communication is linked to lower levels of student communication satisfaction. Importantly, results also showed that instructor credibility tempers the negative association between instructors’ compulsive communication and student communication satisfaction.

Fattening Queer Theory: Review of Queering Fat Embodiment, by Cat Pausé, Jackie Wykes, and Samantha Murray (Editors)

choices in fat studies texts, including a foregrounding of the problematic of the word “obesity” as commonly accepted in fat studies scholarship. I was also struck by the awkward occasional use of the word “heavy” as a synonym for fat; fat studies research tends not to use words that sound either medicalized or euphemistic, as “heavy” does. That being said, there is so much rich data, analysis, and critique of many of the assumptions masquerading as fact in the debates about fat in this text. Herndon puts forth persuasive claims in this book about what motivates the lies, misunderstandings, and prejudice that seek to “eliminate childhood obesity in a generation” as Michelle Obama stated when she publically launched the Let’s Move! initiative, and is well worth a read for anyone serious about fat studies scholarship. Fat Blame belongs next to Amy Farrell’s similar sounding Fat Shame on the bookshelf of all those interested in the humanities and social sciences branch of fat studies.